Author Archives: Negative Eddy

About Negative Eddy

Professional Geek - I work for Microsoft

WFH DIY Meeting Light Bulb

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Negative Eddy

Honey, are you on the phone? When working from home, interruptions are a given. Sometimes its fine and other times I’m in a customer meeting and need privacy, but my family never knows which. My schedule changes during the day … Continue reading →

Posted in automation, Azure, Tinkering | Leave a comment

Deploying a Virtual Assistant on the cheap

Posted on June 25, 2019 by Negative Eddy

The Virtual Assistant Solution (VA) brings together all of the supporting components and greatly simplifies the creation of a new bot project including: basic conversational intents, Dispatch integration, QnA Maker, Application Insights and an automated deployment. Since it is designed … Continue reading →

Posted in Azure, bots | 1 Comment

You’ve got a little bot in your Blazor there

Posted on May 3, 2019 by Negative Eddy

Since Blazor is now officially not-experimental (meaning it is now officially in preview) I figured I’d try to mix it in with my other favorite thing right now… Bots! (For those of you unfamiliar with Blazor, the short description is … Continue reading →

Posted in blazor, bots | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Raw threads and async lambdas

Posted on August 27, 2018 by Negative Eddy

Using async methods/lambdas where they are not expected causes unexpected problems. The typical example I discuss with people is TaskFactory.StartNew() because its an easy way to create Tasks and some people reach for that instead of Task.Run(), but I recently … Continue reading →

Posted in async, c# | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Quick dev directory cleanup tip

Posted on September 21, 2016 by Negative Eddy

[Crosspost from my MSDN blog] When cleaning up drive space, the first thing I do is remove the ‘obj’, ‘bin’, and ‘packages’ directories from my development directories. They are temporary and will be rebuilt the next time I build the … Continue reading →

Posted in tips | 1 Comment

C# Zork running on Ubuntu

Posted on August 14, 2016 by Negative Eddy

So I’ve finally got my VSTS builds running on Ubuntu (and Windows). I haven’t installed Linux on a PC in well over a decade but it has come a long way in that time. Installed Ubuntu 16.04 on HyperV on … Continue reading →

Posted in Dev Stuff, ZMachine, Zork | Leave a comment

Using C# to build 35 year old tech is fun

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Negative Eddy

I’ve always been a fan of Zork. If you’ve been playing games awhile (and I mean a whiiiile) then you probably are too. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, its the original text adventure game. No graphics. … Continue reading →

Posted in Dev Stuff, Programming, Tinkering, ZMachine, Zork | Leave a comment

Do you have a Twinkie?

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Negative Eddy

I want to be this guy. This guy who was behind us in line at the grocery store. …I’m standing there while the cashier rings up my cart, and I notice the guy behind me standing innocently doing nothing. Then … Continue reading →

Posted in life | Leave a comment

Waaaaay oversimplified async/await plumbing

Posted on April 6, 2016 by Negative Eddy

[cross posted from my MSDN blog] Often, when someone asks “how does this async await stuff actually work”? There is a lot of hand waving or someone says “just use reflection and look at it” but the real compiled code … Continue reading →

Posted in Windows Phone | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Tasks are (still) not threads and async is not parallel

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Negative Eddy

[cross posted from my MSDN blog] I talk to a lot of developers who are either new to .NET or are moving from an older version to the newer platform and tools. As such I’m always trying to think of … Continue reading →

Posted in Dev Stuff, Programming | 2 Comments